Easter Holidays & Marie Antoinette Afternoon Tea

April is almost over, so I wanted to make sure I got this post in while it was still somewhat relevant. Last year we didn’t get a chance to participate in the embassy Easter party for the kids as we were in Amsterdam at the time. This year we managed to visit the St. John’s Wood Easter Fayre, have a fun egg hunt organized by some embassy people in the communal garden in front of our apartment building, AND make it to the official embassy Easter Egg Hunt with an official costumed Easter Bunny. So I think we can safely now check off Easter in London.

We also had some Foreign Service friends visiting from Prague. So we got to spend some quality time with them, hit a pub and squeeze in a lovely afternoon tea for the girls. I’m afraid I’m turning into a bit of a snob when it comes to afternoon tea. So many places serve the same sandwiches: cucumber, egg and cress, smoked salmon, and roast beef. I don’t mind the last two, but the first two are getting really old and boring for the price. So I’m starting to chase places with an exciting sandwich menu.

And we nailed it with the Marie Antoinette Afternoon Tea at the Belgraves Hotel in Knightsbridge. We were a bit late as Google maps pegged it about a block from where it actually was. But the restaurant was lovely and we had a fun little booth with a massive colorful pink tea presentation with a fantastic variety of sweet and savory treats. We even received “champagne flavor pearls” as a take-home gift. It was quite a bit more expensive than your average tea. But it sure made for a nice change.

The list of items on the tea tray.

Our champagne flavor pearls.

The fantastically colorful Marie Antoinette Afternoon Tea.

A few days later I got to meet up with another friend that I’d gone to college with in France who hadn’t been able to make it down to Spain for the Girls’ Weekend. So it was great to see her again after so many years and to meet her really cool 8-year-old daughter who spent one evening playing video games with my husband. 🙂

But before that, I spent the morning with them seeing a few sites around London, and we started our day off right with chocolate crepes. Then they came over to our place in the evening for the above video games, pizza and great catching up. I even got to dig out the photo album from our time in France, which I hadn’t dragged down to Spain. So even though Amsterdam was a lot of fun last year. This year, it was nice to be surrounded by friends.